My 6 Daily Behavior Changes this Month (week 4 of January)

Feb 04, 2025

This month has been a blur. It’s hard to believe we are 1/12th through 2025.

It’s time for a monthly recap of my list of behaviors I’m trying to add into my life. But before we do that, I need to take a second to remind myself (and you) why we are doing this. I like saying that reasons are the fuel for excellence, so let’s have a review.

Little actions X time = big changes

James Clear who wrote Atomic Habits says this: “Every action we make is like a vote for who we are trying to become.” Remember, progress is not linear. Little actions may be little at the beginning, but with time they compound to remarkable hights.

Change starts in the mundane not the extraordinary

Here’s something to remember when we are trying to “change our lives.” Changing your life sounds awesome when the thing we are changing makes us look good. But as soon as the change encroaches into our habits and routines, we push against it. We are incredibly resistant to changing the mundane. But we have to start there because life is carried out in the mundane, not the extraordinary. Start there. I know, cleaning your room sucks, but hey, gotta start somewhere.

Now that we have a clearer picture of why small changes matter, let’s see how I did this last month. Welcome to the land of accountability.

List of behaviors

Deep work session before 9am (projects) - 60 min
Daily workout challenge - 5 min
Devotions - 30 min
Read - 15 min
Daily memory/active recall - 10 min
Spanish - 5 min

Again, if you’re curious about what these are, check out the first post where I explain each one.

Results

Let’s see how things have gone and what can be improved. This isn’t the whole month because I got started late, unfortunately.

Deep work session before 9am (projects) - 60 min

❌ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ✅ ❌ ❌ ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅

Daily workout challenge - 5 min

✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅

Devotions - 30 min

❌ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅ ❌ ✅ ✅ ❌ ✅ ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌ ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅

Read - 15 min

✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌ ✅ ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅

Daily memory/active recall - 10 min

✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅

Spanish - 5 min

✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅ ✅ ❌ ✅ ❌ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅

Focus, green or red?

Here’s an interesting question, where do you focus on when you see this? I could look at Spanish for example and say “Man, you can’t even get yourself to do 5 minutes of study a day? Sheesh, buckle up.” Ok, ouch. Also, that’s a fair thing to say.

Or, we could focus on the green. For example, I didn’t miss a single workout or daily memory/active recall this month. That’s cool. Also, I logged 14 hours on my planner-journal-thing that I’m building and it’s almost done now. That’s pretty awesome.

So I’m trying not to be too hard on myself. Sure, I didn’t get as much Spanish study done as I wanted, but I genuinely moved the needle in other areas that are more important. Next month I want to hit it hard and we’ll see how things go.

What needs to be adjusted for next month?

I fell short in a few areas this month. One being, that I didn’t review as often as I should have. This week felt very rushed and I think that’s mostly because I didn’t take time to review how I was doing.

The second thing is I absolutely do not want to forget the skills I learned in the last few months about behavior change. I learned some powerful techniques that almost guarantee change if followed. I don’t want to lose that ability.

Next month I’ll probably cut back on the list and zero in on technique a bit more. I need to pull back the fundamentals of behavioral change as I discussed at the end of this post.

Focus and attention

Every few months I go through different improvement phases that I’m obsessed with. You may remember the last few months have been largely about action and rewiring the brain. Good times. Time for a change though.

I’ve been diving headlong into focus and attention and oh boy has it been juicy. We are going to get into some fun stuff. One of which is a planner that I’m building specifically designed to create deep, intentional focus. I’m bringing it up because I need people to review it and give me honest feedback, so if you’re interested, shoot me a DM and I’ll see what we can do. Most spots are taken, but I figured I’d open it up anyhow.